


Mist and Shadow

by Mariabella Baggins (AgentFrostbite)



Series: The Dragon Riders of Middle Earth [2]
Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies), The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Author should not have been given the tagging ability, But since when am I ever smart?, Creative License, Dwarves don't like dragons, Female Bilbo Baggins, Gen, Hobbits train dragons, I Keep Forgetting That Tag, I decided to investigate 'strange incidents', Made up lore, Semi-made-up dragons, Should probably just make it a proper chaptered story, lots of creative license
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-30
Updated: 2019-04-30
Packaged: 2020-02-10 13:36:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18661474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AgentFrostbite/pseuds/Mariabella%20Baggins
Summary: After yet another semi-harmless dragon incident, Bella begins to look into what's behind all the strategically placed disturbers of the peace. She has no clues to go off of, aside from speculation, reasoning, and some helpful experience, but she knows it's not incompetence. Luckily, the enemy decides to show one of their cards. It may be the break she's been looking for, but it carries an omen of death.





	Mist and Shadow

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, look, I made another one! And it's not just to satisfy my inner Bella/Thorin shipper!
> 
> What happened was that, almost as soon as I posted Romantic Flight (which y'all love, and that makes me so happy, yay!!), I wrote one where Thorin gets his own dragon and Bella tries to teach him to fly, and it's basically a repeat of Romantic Flight, but less shippy. Which looked fun at the time, but after having reread it twice, feels sorta...cheap. And under-thought.
> 
> So then I decided to try thickening it up with some post-event explanations in as close as I can get to imitating to J.R.R. Tolkien's rather curious form of explanations, and it felt slightly less cheap, but a bit more bulky. So THEN I started a fic that would fall between that and Romantic Flight hat would explain it in the hopes of kick-starting the third one into something slightly more refined.
> 
> And then I just chucked it all out the window because it still didn't feel right.
> 
> I decided to try it from a different angle and investigate the disturbances. It went from a one-shot that can be read sequentially with Romantic Flight to "Hey, this really oughta be posted in it's own separate, complete story, because by the time you wrap it up, there's gonna be, like, 40 of these," but I'm lazy and have a bad track record with deadlines, so I decided to one-shot the whole freaking thing on about as haphazard a posting schedule as it could possibly be (AKA, I THINK I posted Romantic Flight on Tuesday, but I'm not sure, so let's just shoot for Tuesday and see where we get).
> 
> Thus, Mist and Shadow was born.
> 
> Also, because my friend and I are doing an in-depth rewrite of the Hobbit Trilogy with HTTYD Dragons in Middle Earth, I had to get a doc that details where everything lives so I know when to bring things in, and that got me revising my Field Guide to Dragons Doc, and THAT made me flip through the HTTYD Dragon Classes wiki page for the Franchise, and tl;dr, I sorta semi-invented a few dragon subspecies because there weren't enough subspecies for my liking.
> 
> So, yes, this is gonna end up being a big thing, and if I stick with it long enough, it'll eventually come out in a full-length fic form, with proper plotting and new scenes and whatnot, but for now, take all the one-shots I throw at you and enjoy them!

  If the Nadder coming through the window had been the last straw for holding Bella back, then the Triple Stryke currently occupying the meeting hall was the last straw for Bella holding back. The Dwarves would be there in four minutes, and this one needed to be out of there and back at the stables by then. "When I find the moron who's causing all this trouble, I'm gonna tie 'em to Whiplash for a few hours and see if they're so keen on messing with me afterwards," she muttered as she approached the dragon.

  Technically, the Guide For Safe Handling stated that one should always approach a sleeping dragon slowly, calling its name or somehow making yourself known so as not to startle them, and always with the kind of meek gentleness that one ought to exhibit around creatures that used to eat Hobbits for Second Breakfast a few millennia ago. However, the Guide was written by an exceptionally gentle Fleetfoot, and Bella was one of the five Master Tamers of the Shire, so she didn't give more than a couple moments of thought to how she was going to get him out.

  "Okay, tough guy, it's wakey-wakey time. Up on your feet," she announced, about three feet from his snout. The Stryke stirred, but slept on. "Basher, c'mon. You can't sleep here, and you know it." He blearily opened his eyes and blinked at her, offering only a temperamental snort. She could hear the Dwarves' voices coming down the corridor, and with a sinking dread, she realized they'd arrived a few minutes early. Sensible planning, she supposed. Not very convenient for her, but sensible. " _Basher_ ," she hissed.

  "So, I told him, 'If you can't make a straight shot, how-'" That voice belonged to one of the guards. The bald-headed one, she believed. Who was speaking hardly mattered. The cat – or, in this case, the dragon – was out of the bag, and had Bella not been preoccupied with getting one of the lumpiest, grumpiest Triple Strykes she'd ever had to train off his claimed spot, she'd have burst into laughter at their faces. Even Thorin, who'd already been on a bit of a spin with her and Twilight, was not a small bit uncomfortable with even being around a dragon.

  Or, perhaps, they all simply recognized the species and didn't want to be anywhere near it.

  "What in Durin's name-?" started one of the other four guards.

  "Don't ask me," Bella cut in, momentarily forgetting herself. "If I knew who was behind this, they'd be getting what's coming to them right now." She snapped her fingers a couple times, and Basher let out so angry a hiss that the Dwarves drew their weapons. This, in turn, made Basher even angrier, and he got to his feet, unbraiding his tail and brandishing the three stingers as threateningly as he could. Naturally, the Dwarves began to back off, closing ranks around the Crown Prince and guiding him out of the room. Not an ideal situation, but Bella could work with it.

  "Oi!" she snapped. "Knock it off!" Basher simply tossed a hiss over his shoulder at her. Having worked with enough Triple Strykes, she was well aware that that action meant a warning for her to stay back. "Oh, come off it. They're not gonna hurt _me_ , and you know that very well. You're just grumpy about being woken up." The Dwarves were looking at her as if she was completely insane – and she supposed, in their minds, she was – but she wasn't backing down. Basher seemed to be picking up on this, and he gave her one last, rather longing look that begged her to side with him. In response, she simply sent him a stern look and pointed to the window.

  The obstinate dragon agreed to allow the group onto the table, but instead of leaving the room, he curled up right next to the fireplace and hissed. Bella sighed, then turned to the visitors. "I'm terribly sorry about all this."

  "And yet, you can't make that beast leave?" one of the guards snapped. Bella opened her mouth to say something decidedly undiplomatic, and was saved from a later lecture on behavior by Thorin, who spoke for her.

  "Miss Baggins will be here the entire time, and it is far enough away from the table that if it decided to act up, we could take cover. Leave it be, Brelak." The Dwarf grumbled, but obeyed. Bella shot Thorin a thankful look just as the Hobbit side of the meeting arrived. They all looked at the dragon, then at the Dwarves, and the only one who wasn't so nervous that Bella was surprised they weren't visibly shaking was the Thain. He simply heaved a small, dramatic sigh and looked at Bella.

  "At it again, is he?"

* * *

   "I still don't get it!" Bella exclaimed in utter frustration. She let her hands smack against her thighs as her arms dropped from their dramatic, flailing gesture. "I have no clue who could be behind this! Everyone knows we need this agreement, and there are only five of us who could wrangle so many dragons, and of those five, only I still know how to get into other people's locked houses!"

  "I wish I could help," her cousin-niece Primula Brandybuck said as she gently placed a teacup on Bella's desk. Bella gave her a grateful look, then took the cup in her slightly calloused hands and wrapped her slender fingers around it. Prim took a set on the chair in Bella's study and quietly sipped her own tea.

  "I just- I still haven't figured out what they're going for. Or who it might even _be_ ; Jolie swore her took was locked. Buster shouldn't have been able to escape," Bella added. "I know if I can just isolate _why_ they're doing it, everything else will fall into place."

  "How so?"

  Bella took a small sip, then placed the cup back on the desk. "Well, all the encounters could certainly have been fatal, if the Dwarves were handling it on their own. And that's where the certainty stops." She turned in the chair so she was now facing Prim, allowing the younger lass a good view of Bella's confusion. "Are they actually trying to kill the Dwarves and just terrible at it? That would seem to be the driving force behind a few of these encounters, the Nadder being the most prominent among them."

  Prim's face morphed into a cheeky smile. "The Nadder that grabbed him before you and Twilight-"

  " _Just_ Twilight," Bella corrected quickly. "I had nothing to do with the joyride." Twilight, lounging by the fire in the parlor, looked up at her. "Not that I didn't thoroughly enjoy it. But yes. But if they wanted it to be fatal, why not take care of the flyable dragons first? Why let Twilight stay beneath the window, free and ready to go?"

  "They didn't know you'd jump?" Prim suggested. Bella shrugged, grabbed her tea, and took another sip.

  "They could just be trying to scare the Dwarves off. But that doesn't help me narrow it down, either. Every Hobbit knows that we need this alliance. The Orcs will not try to regroup – or, at least, won't regroup so soon – if the threat of obliteration by dragon-riding Hobbits is backed by an entire Dwarven army," Bella continued.

  "So maybe it's an Orc or a Man loosing them," Prim added. Then she frowned. "But no, they wouldn't get through the Shire so easily. All the dragons would have a conniption, and they'd be busted before the end of the first day."

  "Exactly. My only other guess is that they're trying to show the Dwarves how much they need this alliance because we're the only people who they'll entertain the thought of talking to that can tame dragons," Bella surmised. "But if that were the case, there would have to be _some_ kind of clue or indication. Something would have to point in that direction. It wasn't common knowledge that I was going to be a staple at the meetings, and if not me, then Grandda, but I'm still…"

  "Not sure," Prim finished. "I have to say, that last one does seem likely. And there's no evidence against it yet."

  Bella took her teacup and rose from her chair, striding to the parlor and absentmindedly stepping over Twilight's tail as she began to pace. "So we have to turn to evidence. It clearly has to be someone good – almost certainly a Master Tamer – for them to wrangle so many different dragons so expertly. They have to be good at vanishing, have to know what dragon is where, and have to be able to get past any locked door or sentry to reach them. And I can think of no-one to fit that criteria!" Bella cried out in frustration, sinking into the couch with such force that her tea sloshed almost over the side. She brought her other hand beneath it to catch any fallen liquid, and huffed a sigh. "There's nothing."

  "Well…" Prim started uncomfortably. Bella looked up. "There is _one_ thing I can think of, and you're not gonna like it."

  "Tell me," Bella said. It wasn't exactly a demand, though it left no room for hesitation. Nor was it precisely an order, though it didn't allow for withholding.

  "A Fae might be able to do it."

  And it clicked.

* * *

   "Now, just- Hold on, lassie!" Gerontius exclaimed, cutting Bella off. She stopped her pacing and stared at him, doing her best not to look frustrated. "I'm not saying I don't believe you," he started, tone measured and cautious, a sure sign he was about to say something she didn't want to hear. "I am, however, advising caution. This is a delicate political time for the Shire, and we have put a strain on relations between us and the Fae. We can't go accusing any of them of sabotage without good proof."

  The counterargument died on her lips. He was right, and she knew it. So she simply sunk back into one of the many chairs littered about the empty meeting room and put her hands on her chin and _thought_ as hard as her brain would let her. "We need to figure out why," was the only thing she came up with.

  "I agree," he said, lowering himself into a chair nearby. "What have you got?"

  "Well, they're not trying to kill them. If they are, they're really incompetent about it. Why leave so many dragons nearby if you wanted to have a dragon attack be blamed for the death of the Crown Prince?" Bella started. "Why leave Twilight unattended and healthy, regardless of who might throw themselves from the window after the Nadder? Why make it so _easy_ to fix?"

  "You haven't- _hadn't_ been a major part of the proceedings at that point, so it's possible they didn't account for you. I told only you about Thorn being nearby, but you're right. Anyone who doesn't assume Isengrim and Theodulf would toss themselves out the window after that dragon is a fool. The attacks on the Dwarves don't have enough effort in them to be serious attempts on their lives," he replied. "Which leaves?"

  "They're either trying to scares the Dwarves off or show them that they need us to handle their dragons," she answered. Gerontius hummed, bringing a hand up to his chin, in a matter rather similar to how Bella had looked last night. "I cannot determine which. There's no clues at to whether they're trying to drive them off or-"

  A commotion in one of the rooms down the hall drew their attention, and both were swift to rise and find the problem. It wasn't hard to locate. There was a hallway full of smoke, all of which streamed from a single room. Though the smoke was dark enough to indicate the presence of an absolutely raging fire, she could neither see nor smell any flames, and the hallway was no hotter than normal. Most of the Dwarves were standing outside, coughing their lungs out, hands on their weapons or empty holsters. Gerontius began asking what had happened, who had done this, was everyone alright? Bella did a count of the Dwarves that she could see, and it included everyone except one.

  Thorin was not there.

  "Thorin!" Dwalin, the chief of the guard and Thorin's friend, from what she could tell, had also noticed his disappearance. The two shared a knowing, rather horrified look, and it spurred her feet into action.

  While her Grandda helped herd the Dwarves away from the smoke, and the gathering group of Hobbits aided them down the hall toward the Infirmary herded people away from the door, Bella dashed straight into the smoke. She heard a few shouts behind her, calling her name or telling her to stop. The only two she recognized by name were her Grandda and Dwalin. Neither of them managed to get a hand on the still-spry Hobbit if they reached foe her, so she stood a few steps in, took as deep a breath as she dared too, and shouted. "Thorin!"

 The smoke that filled the room was thick and choking, enveloping her with gray-blackness and obscuring her vision, so much so that she couldn't see the wall or anything in the room at all. She couldn't even see sunlight from the window on the far side. "Thorin!" she shouted again. She soon found that she couldn't draw in a single breath without coughing. It burned her lungs and eyes, inherently warning her to stop, go back, stay away, which she ignored. "Thor-" Her lungs and throat gave out, and the word cut off in a coughing fit. She tried again to suck in enough air to speak, but it felt as though a Gronckle was sitting squarely on her chest, so she gave up on shouting and began to search.

  She didn't know the room very well, as most of her time was not spent in the political arena. If this were one of the Academy rooms, she'd have been able to find her way around it rather easily. As such, she ran straight into the overturned table and almost tripped over a toppled chair within the first minute or so. She could barely see it through the smoke, but there was enough of a hazy outline that she could guess where all the chairs had ended up, so long as they hadn't been used as weapons. She staggered around the room, arms out and failing, hoping to brush up against it. She didn't find him, but interestingly enough, she also didn't find any fire.

  All around her, she could hear a loud hissing noise, as if there were a brood of baby snakes scattered about the room. They sounded as though they were parked in the rafters. Suddenly, she heard what sounded like a sword slamming into the floor, and one of the hisses turned to pained squeals and squeaks. The vague thought that it must be a dragon – multiple dragons – doing this flashed across her mind, shortly before the thought that there must've been someone _wielding_ the sword in there came and went. She guessed that it must be Thorin and so maneuvered toward the noise, still hacking her head off.

  The hisses were louder than she'd assumed, because only when she judged that she was better halfway through the room did she begin hear Thorin coughing and grunting, almost as if he was fighting something. Blindly, she reached out, fingers brushing against his arm. She locked onto it and was immediately pulled toward the far end of the room. The screeching dragon was right next to her now, and between the noise, chaos, and smoke, she could barely think. It was getting awfully difficult to breathe, and she was sure the black around the edges of her vision wasn't the smoke.

  She simply did the only thing she could think to do and planted her feet firmly in the floor. Thorin stopped where he was, and the tug she could feel in her direction told her that he wasn't heading for the other end of his own volition. She began to pull backwards, and between both his and her efforts to make for the door, whoever was pulling him was overwhelmed. They let him go, and the pair fell onto the floor with a harsh thud. Bella simply could not breathe any longer, not even to get smoke-filled air into her lungs so that she might hack it back out.

  It occurred to her that she might very well die there, choking on smoke, pretending that she was a hero.

  Thorin seemed to be in a slightly better state than she – which, if she'd had the brainpower to spare, she might've been embarrassed by – so he grabbed her arm and began to haul her to her feet. The screeching was still highly prominent, so she threw her right arm out, found the small dragon, and dragged it to her chest as she and Thorin scrambled to their feet and made for the door as fast as their now-clumsy, stumbling legs allowed for them to. She didn't stop until she hit the wall. The matching thud beside her told her Thorin had done the same. She grabbed his arm and dragged him to the left with the last reserves of her strength, where the voices calling for them seemed more clear.

  Upon stumbling into clear air, they both promptly fell to their knees and attempted to breathe deeply. It only resulted in more hacking fits, and the squealing creature Bella grasped to tightly in her now scratched arm seemed to quiet down when it saw other people.

  She didn't have the good sense to understand they were pointing their swords and arrows at the dragon, and not at her, before she blacked out entirely.

* * *

   "I still say you should've let me kill it," was the first thing Bella heard when she came to.

  She felt a wriggling creature curled up against her right side, and several spots of pain lit up on her arm. To her left, she could feel Twilight's leathery wing brush up against the bed and her left hand. Her head hurt like she couldn't believe, and her throat felt as though someone had fired up a Monstrous Nightmare, crammed it down there, and let it rage for a while. She didn't even want to think about her lungs.

  She forced her eyes open, and they watered as soon as she did. Everything was made blurry with the tears and her unfocused gaze, so she brought her left hand up to lazily rub at them. The motion alerted everyone to the fact that she was awake. "Morning," she slurred. She almost regretted it afterwards, when a coughing fit wracked her body. Everyone moved a step forward, but Doderic – at least, she _thought_ that's who it looked like – was the only one to actually approach the bed. He helped her sit up while she focused on taking deep, even breaths.

  "And a good morning to you too, you stubborn ox," he replied cheerfully. Bella huffed a laugh, not trusting the state of her throat to tolerate a chuckle or snort. "Drink _slowly_." She nodded, then took the teacup he offered her. It was full of what looked like water but smelled like sweet herbs. She very slowly sipped it, pausing for breaks every time she even thought she might start coughing. "There." He turned to the rest of the room. "Don't let her leave the bed until after she's gotten a good night's sleep, and make sure she keeps drinking that."

  "We will," Gerontius answered seriously. Bella pursed her lips and looked at her left hand, which now rested neatly in her lap. Twilight purred, and Bella moved her hand to Twilight's head. The Night Fury purred once again, this time in happy approval. "Thank you, Doderic." The doctor left, and the room was silent for a long moment. Gerontius leveled his gaze at her, and she forced herself to meet it. "I won't chide you, since I know it won't do any good, and I'd have done the same, in your position." She smiled gratefully. "I will say that I want a nice explanation as to why you dragged one of them out with you."

  She swallowed, took as deep a breath as she dared to, then spoke in a horridly raspy voice. "It got hurt, and I wasn't sure if it was a fire." He nodded. Bella carefully drew her right arm out from beneath the covers, and saw it was wrapped, wrist to shoulder, in thick white cloth. Parts of it were tinged pinkish-red, and she noted that all of these spots were where the pain was most prominent. The dragon responsible poked its head out from beneath the covers, and Bella's eyes went wide with delight.

  "It's a Rattling Smokebreath," Gerontius confirmed.

  "It's a death-bringer," one of the Dwarves accused. Thorin snapped something in Khuzdul, and he stepped back, shutting up.

  "Omens of death," Thorin added, to appease the Dwarves, still nervously shifting and glaring at the dragon. "Anyone whom they touch will die in a month. To let them scratch you is tantamount to inviting the Reaper to take you." There was a note of deep concern in his voice, and his eyes were full of compassion for her. Maybe even some worry. It set back into a flutter whatever butterflies that decided to take up residence in her stomach after that one flight.

  "That's not how we recall hearing the story," Gerontius remarked, a warm smile on his lips and a twinkle in his eye. Bella nestled into the bed as if she were a fauntling of 10, sick with a fever, about to hear another grand fable spun by her dear Grandda. Twilight sat on her left, wings tucked against her and tail snaking beneath the bed, ready to defend against whatever might come. Thorin stood on her right, resolute and majestic, sneaking glances at both her and Twilight.

  She felt safe.

  "For Hobbits, we say that Mandos, Judge of the Dead, lived alone in his great halls. Yavanna, the Green Lady and our mother, worried that he might become lonely as the many Ages would drag on. She looked far and wide, searching for a companion for him, and settled on a small group of Smothering Smokebreaths that lived near his halls. She took them and painted their heads and wings white with bones and skulls, and presented them to him as a gift. He, of course, could not keep living things in such a place, but his heart was warmed. He asked that they be let free into the world, to roam and live, and that when they once again returned to him, he would greet them gladly."

  "We show them care so when they speak of us, they may remember us highly," Bella added. The Dwarves looked rather enraptured with the story, which was both impressive and expected. Gerontius was such a good storyteller that some remarked he could charm a group of Orcs to stillness with his tales.

  "Humph," one of them remarked, crossing his arms. Bella simply smiled wryly.

  "They're quite skittish, or at least, that's what we're told." Gerontius pulled out his pipe, then stopped and replaced it. Bella did actually snort at that, though it almost sent her into another coughing fit. She reached for the teacup on the dresser with her bandaged arm, and dull needles of pain shot up it. She ignored them, grabbed the cup, and began to slowly sip this one down as well. "No-one's seen one around these parts for a long time."

  "They're common near Erebor," Dwalin growled.

  Both Tooks stopped and looked at each other. The conversation without words seemed to go in this manner:

  "You don't think-"

  "It's entirely possible, but how would an Orossi get here and be so at home?"

  "A distant relative of one?"

  "So is it a warning, a threat, or a ruse?"

  "Perhaps all three at once."

  "What's going on?" Thorin asked, picking up on the urgency of what was occurring. They both looked at him.

  "You may want to sit down for this one, your Highness," Gerontius said.


End file.
